Burnet Gallery Presents “Fresh”

10 Artists from the Gallery’s First Five Years

OVERVIEW:

  • “Fresh” agroup show of 10 artists featured in past solo exhibitions from the gallery’s first five years.
  • Burnet Gallery, Le Méridien Chambers, 901 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, Minn.
  • Opening reception is 6 to 9 p.m.,Sat., March 12 and open to the public.
  • Show runs throughMay 1, 2011
  • Gallery hours are 11 a.m. to 9 p.m. daily

MINNEAPOLIS – Burnet Gallery, the art gallery tucked into the west wing of Le Méridien Chambers is turning five this year. To celebrate, it’s presenting, “Fresh,” a group show of 10 artists from past solo shows. Featured artists include, Matthew Bakkom, David Bartley, Allen Brewer, Chris Larson, Janet Lobberecht, S. Catrin Magnusson, Sonja Peterson, Megan Rye, Andrea Stanislav and Angela Strassheim. (Artist profiles are attached.)

The idea for the show originated with Ralph Burnet, general partner of Le Méridien Chambers and the gallery’s namesake.

“We were looking for a way to recognize our first five years and Ralph was very excited about bringing togetherseveral of our past artists in a single show,” said Jennifer Phelps, art director for the Burnet Gallery.

While the show isn’t all inclusive -- the gallery has shown the work of more than 106 artists in 15 solo andseven group exhibitions since it originally opened in 2006 – Phelps does think the show reflects the diverse range of workembraced by the gallery.

“Over the years” explained Phelps,“we’ve showcased a wide range of contemporary art and artists. We’ve had well-established as well as emerging artists. We’ve had Minnesota-natives and international artists. We’ve had paintings, drawings, sculpture, photography, video and a wide range of mixed media.

For the retrospective virtually all of the works are new pieces by the artists not previously exhibited. Many reflect new directions or themes the artists have taken since they first exhibited in the gallery.

“While we couldn’t include everyone we’ve ever shown, this is a very exciting group of artists and I think the power, energy and intensity of their work when shown together serves as a bit of a self-portrait for the gallery itself,” said Phelps. “As these artists have grown and evolved, so has the gallery itself.”

Burnet Gallery is located in Le Méridien Chambers, an award-winning art hotel located in downtown Minneapolis. Burnet Gallery is a commercial gallery showcasing works by a wide array of international, national and local contemporary artists.
Considered one of the top boutique art hotels in the world, Le MéridienChambers features more than 200 pieces of original contemporary art throughout the public areas as well as the hotel’s 60 guest rooms. Located at 901 Hennepin Ave., Minneapolis, Minn., it offers a unique combination of art, culinary, design and true boutique hotel experience. For reservations, call: 612-767-6900 or visit:

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Image: Pig by Megan Rye, Watercolor on paper, 22 by 30 inches unframed

Burnet Gallery “Fresh” Featured Artists

Matthew Bakkomreceived his BA from the University of Virginia in 1991 and his MFA from the University of Minnesota in 2007. Since the early 1990s he has worked as a visual artist and organizer of projects in North America and Europe. He has participated in numerous group and individual exhibitions at various venues including the WalkerArtCenter, the Institute of Contemporary Art (Philadelphia), the Queens Museum of Art (New York) and Le Space Elektra (Paris). He has received awards of support from the 2010 McKnight Artists Fellowship the Jerome Foundation, the Rema Hort Mann Foundation, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council and the Mayor’s Office of Cultural Affairs of the City of Paris.

David Bartley is a recipient of the 2007 McKnight Artist Fellowship for Visual Artists and received his Master of Fine Arts from Southern Illinois University, Edwardsville, Ill. He is an 18-year veteran of the WalkerArtCenter, serving as its senior registration technician collections manager. A long, deceptively bland title for the individual who handles all the center’s complicated installations. He also oversees and personally escorts some of the museum’s more intricate and expensive pieces either on their way to or from the Walker.

Allen Brewer( is an artist/illustrator/educator living and working in St. Paul, Minn.Currently he is on an art journey in Ireland. He has exhibited in New York, Los Angeles, Minneapolis/St Paul and Victoria, Canada.Brewer has also illustrated national advertising campaigns for United Airlines, Target, and Marshall Fields, children's books for Target, and television commercials.His work, although rooted in memory, tends to shift from series to series by use of various materials.

Allen was born into a family that was already artistically prolific. A great, great grandfather paved the way with Hudson RiverSchool prowess, establishing himself as a premier portrait and landscape painter.
For Brewer, an innate desire to re-create life’s beauty/complexity has always been a driving force behind his work, whether it’s with realism or a more simple style. Brewer tends to focus on the immediate reaction he gets when encountering the “sublime."
Chris Larson was born in 1966 in St. Paul, Minnesota. After receiving his Master of Fine Arts degree from Yale University in 1992, he has exhibited widely throughout the United States and Europe at venues such as Staedtische Galerie im Buntentor, Bremen, Germany; magnus müller Gallery, Berlin, Germany; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, Minn; the Minneapolis Institute of Art Minneapolis; Art in General, New York; the Weisman Art Museum, Minneapolis, and Franklin Artworks, Minneapolis, among many other venues. His work is currently on view in the exhibition “The Spectacular of Vernacular” at the WalkerArtCenter through May 8, 2011. He has received the McKnight Foundation Artist Fellowship, the Jerome Foundation Fellowship, the Bush Foundation Artist Fellowship and the Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellowship. Larson is currently an instructor at the University of Minnesota, Minn.

Janet Lobberecht( expectations of space; how and why space is delineated, and how designated space functions culturally on personal, political and societal levels. Incorporating site, performance, video, photography, and drawing into her work, Lobberecht employs a range of conceptual strategies to address site-specific relationships regarding the language and landscape of boundaries and markers. Lobberecht received her B.F.A. from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. She is a recipient of the MCAD/Jerome Foundation Fellowship for Emerging Artists and the McKnight Foundation Visual Arts Fellowship.She has a solo exhibition at Franklin Artworks, Minneapolis, through March 26, 2011. Currently she resides in the Twin Cities.

S. Catrin Magnusson is a graduate of the Minneapolis College of Art and Design’s MFA program. She is a visual artist living in Minneapolis, producing work in sculpture, video and photography. Catrin has also been involved in many aspects of the film community from directing her own short films, to working in various capacities on feature films and commercials. Locally, she has had films in MNTV, MSPIFF and Sound Unseen festivals and recently received a Jerome Production Grant.

Sonja Peterson lives and works in Minneapolis. She was born in Rochester, Minn. She studied political science at Whittier College, Calif., and later received her BFA from the MinneapolisCollege of Art & Design and her MFA from the University of Minnesota in 2009. Peterson’s work has been exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Krasl Art Center, St. Joseph, Mich..; Beijing Film Academy, Beijing, China; NYCAMS, New York; The Armoury Gallery, Milwaukee, Wisc. and, Fresh stART, Santa Monica, Calif. Peterson has been featured in mn original; New American Paintings magazine and received a Minnesota State Arts Board Artist Fellowship in 2009.

Megan Rye( received her BFA in Painting from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998, and went on to complete her MFA in Painting at the University of Minnesota. In 2005 she attended the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Rye is the recipient of a 2008 McKnight Foundation Fellowship; 2007 and 2004 Minnesota State Arts Board Grants; and the 2005 Jerome Foundation Fellowship. Her work is included in private collections across the country. In 2007 her first solo exhibition, “I Will Follow You into the Dark” was held at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts,Minneapolis. She has an upcoming solo exhibition at Forum Gallery, New York in June 2011.

Andréa Stanislav ( a multimedia artist. A Chicago native, she grew up in a family of musicians. Stanislav’s body of work includes sculpture, constructions, sound, multichannel video and installation. The work is inspired by the language of film, architecture and pop culture. Her installations combine formalism, concept and interactivity to create an experiential environment that explores worlds we can’t see but that we know intuitively are real. Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions around the world.

Stanislav exhibitions include: “River to Infinity – The Vanishing Points, “The Minneapolis Institute of Arts, “Andrea Stanislav – Flashland,” Jonathan Shorr Gallery, New York City; Packer Schopf Gallery, Chicago, IL; and “Land of the Lost,” GAGA ArtCenter, Garnerville, NY. Upcoming exhibitions include Sculpture Key West, Key West, Fla., 2011; University of Oregon, Eugene, Ore., 2011; Morningside College Sioux City, Iowa, Northern Spark, Minneapolis/St. Paul, 2011; Plains Art Museum, Fargo, N. D., 2012.

She has received the 2010 McKnight Artists Fellowship; Imagine Fund Award 2010, Dubai; 2011 International Visiting Artist Award, University of Calgary, Alberta, Canada.She is currently a PHd candidate in New Media and Communication at the EuropeanGraduateSchool, Saas Fee Switzerland and an Assistant Professor of Art at the University of Minnesota, Minn.

Angela Strassheim ( work has received strong acclaim from the arts community. Strassheim’s images have been described by the New York Times as, “painstaking portraits … candy colored and strangely loving” and “like scenes from a contemporary fairy tale.”

In 2006, Strassheim had a breakout year, she received grants from the Jerome, McKnight Photography and Bush Fellowship; she was selected to exhibit in the 2006 Whitney Biennial Exhibition “Day for Night;,” and she had her first museum show at the Faulconer Gallery at GrinnellCollege in Iowa for the series “Left Behind. Since 2006, she has exhibited in the Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago, Ill.; Galeria Moises Perez de Albeniz, Pampolona, Spain; Sara Teccia Roma, NYC; Pinchuk Art Center, Kiev, Ukraine; Walker Art Center, Minneapolis,; Monterey Museum of Art, Calif.; National Museum of Women in the Arts, Washington D.C.; Arles, France; DeCordova Museum, Lincoln, Mass.; DeMoines Art Center, DesMoines, Iowa; Yale School of Archtecture,New Haven, Conn.; Israel Museum, Jerusalem, Israel; Centro Galego De Arte Contemporanea, Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Marvelli Gallery, New York; Cheim & Reid, New York. She has a current solo exhibition opening March 2011 at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Minneapolis.

Born in Bloomfield, Iowa, Strassheim received her B.F.A. from Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) and her M.F.A. from YaleUniversity. She has worked as a forensic photographer in Miami, Richmond, Va. and New York City. In 2004 she returned to MCAD as a visiting artist.

Editor’s Notes: Hi-res and additional images are available upon request.